By Tova O’Brien
‘Tis the season to be jolly, but for many ‘jolly’ means more than just high spirited, and the fondness some Kiwis have for alcohol and drugs goes into overdrive – turning the holiday period into rush hour for emergency services.
It gives new meaning to the phrase “picking up at the pub”, and thanks to work Christmas parties and new year’s revelry, it is an older crowd keeping emergency staff busy – putting strain not only on resources, but also patients suffering serious non-alcohol related conditions.
“They might be having a heart attack of pneumonia, or something requiring hospital admission, and that process is taking place at the same time as you have people being loud, abusive, vomiting and so on – where their only complaint was that they drank too much alcohol,” says emergency department doctor Paul Quigley.
Going into summer’s festival season, the Drug Foundation’s Ross Bell says drinking is not the only thing on the rise.
“New Zealanders like their drugs – whether it’s cannabis, or stimulants like party pills, ecstasy, methamphetamine.”
Every December, 20 percent more people come through the doors of Wellington Hospital’s emergency department for intoxication.
But some don’t make it that far.
“People sleep outdoors when they’re drunk, when you can’t shiver, you don’t make enough heat and basically die of cold exhaustion,” says Dr Quigley.
“You run the risk of people falling unconscious, of people drinking too much and choking on their own vomit, and of people overdosing from drug use,” says Mr Bell.
It’s not just the people doing the consuming who are affected.
“We get people with broken hands, facial injuries from being beaten up, and unfortunately at this time of the year, we also see a rise in domestic violence,” says Dr Quigley.
The rise was 30 percent this year, and Women’s Refuge says the annual increase could haunt us a lot longer yet.
“The generational nature of violence is that you’re looking at changing generational behaviour that is not going to go away overnight – we’re probably not going to see effective change for at least 10-20 years,” says Heather Henare of Women’s Refuge.
It’s a problem that looks set to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Women’s Refuge estimates that nearly 30 women have been killed by their partners or ex-partners over the last 18 months – that’s twice the figure from last year.
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